A New Dawn of Freedom

A new dawn of freedom? May it be so
Even in this artificial shift of time
According to those calendars and clocks
Who still attribute virtues to old Janus

For this is Mary’s day, especially so,
This last day in the Octave, now at dawn
And She is our new Dawn of freedom given,
Our Porta Caeli, Bearer of Our Lord

Now with the light we rise to greet the Light
A new dawn of freedom – and it is so

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                               A New Medication and its Cautions

One of the side-effects of my new med is death
Along with garbled speech and all the reth
Right here on this enclosure; that’s what it saith -
And when I read of death I lost my breath!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               An Executioner Feels Bad

One of the state’s executioners
Is feeling bad about what he does
He’s speaking out about PTSD
Sleeplessness and thoughts of suicide

Speaking out

Lethal drugs, poison gas, maybe firing squads
Hands as skillful as those of an abortionist
“None of us wanted to do it,” he says
But he does it. A ticket to promotion

Don’t do drugs, kids

The chief executioner gets to be a Commander
He doesn’t tell his children about his work

It’s for the children

Maybe the Prisoner was Already Dead

     “...he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.”

                               -George Orwell, “A Hanging”

Evening. Maybe he was already dead
Dead long before the State boys strapped him down
And a functionary started an I.V. drip
Left arm? Or right? In a cinder-block room

Fluorescent lights

With windowed faces posted on both sides
Testaments to the protocols of death
The liturgy of falling away because
He and the lads murdered a helpless man

Fluorescent lights

He breathed. And then he didn’t. His bowels let go
And did they put a Band-Aid on the wound?

Fluorescent lights

But now

Let’s go outside and feel the wind

                                                           ­      We live

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  An Exercise in Humility and Colombian Coffee

I once saw one of those slogan coffee cups
(I’m sure it would have served as well for tea)
Which read something like this:

                                                   The beginning of faith
Is to realize that you are not
The ruler of the Universe

And it is so – I am not very good
At ruling even myself

His battered old laptop slung across his back
That famous laptop with the sticker that reads
In font Albertus “This Machine Kills Haters”
He poses rustically on a railway line

His happenin’ hipster hat pulled ‘way down low
Over the deep-souled Eyes That Have Seen It All
While his slender, artistic fingers seem
To flutter in search of existential truth

(Or maybe two forms of identification)

While off camera a cop writes him a ticket
For trespassing on railway property

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   An Extended Metaphysical Warranty

You buy something and the man behind the counter
Asks you if you want to pay extra for a warranty
And when you ask why, doesn’t the gadget work
He’s grumpily ready for you to move on

Most things in life don’t have extended warranties:
Love, Hershey bars, tree frogs on the window screen
The John Wayne movie machine that broke long ago
But memories of MeeMaw are always fresh

You live through pain, and He who is beyond the stars
Gives it meaning – that’s the warranty

An Extraordinary Ordinary Life

            For Mrs. Tinney Davidson, The Waving Grandma
                               Comox, British Columbia

She lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary street
And every day she waved to children passing by
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Because a wave is a good beginning to the day

In the morning she waved the children along to school
And in the evening waved them back again home
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Just like the waves that hug a beach, with love

And then one day she went away, and waved -
And the waved-at children will wave back forever

Extraordinary!

(cf. Here and Now, CBC St. John’s, 26 April 2019)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                       An Hour with Dachshunds and Keats

The first day of autumn – surprisingly cool
In this almost tropical latitude
So after a day of working outside
I sat with Keats before a brushy fire

As is my custom I read his “Ode to Autumn”
With a tumbler of – lemonade – to hand
While the little fire sang its own kind of song
And the dachshunds snuffled among the leaves

The first day of autumn – surprisingly cool
And in her rising the Evening Star blesses us

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
In penitential pain – O pray for us
A thousand souls depending on your peace
And then a thousand more for each, and more

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent
And leaning on your axe-stave now become
Your staff of office among foxes and bears
Please consecrate in us your Spirit of love

Saint Seraphim among the birch trees, bent -
Dear friend of penitents, dear Heaven-sent

Someone demands an immigration czar
Which could be interesting: a crown, a throne
A double-eagle flag, the border guards
Singing a Troparian while on patrol

On the Steppes of Central Texas 1
The Czar in progress royal comes to see
His happy villagers waving MREs
From behind the merry Potemkin wire

The Czar, contented, turns his escort then
To Petersburg, and lunch at the Little Red Hen

1 Cf Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                    A­n Indignant Dachshund

When my little dogs stops and pps and ps
She expects a little privacy, please!

Upon reading John Mark Reynolds’ essay#
#“The Shattered Image of the Thirteenth Century”#

We’re born as exiles in a castle’s ruins
And learn to play among long-fallen stones
We hold up shards of glass against the sun
Delighting in the colors falling through

Pendentives now bear up only the skies
Above twelve empty niches in a row
A prophet-wind sighs through an upper room
And fallen leaves decay on shelves collapsed

A gone-wild garden roams along the walls
And through an ancient arch an apple falls

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                             “What’s Holding us Back!?”

                           A video clip from Natuashish

Two little children on a snowmobile
Which smokes and sputters, going nowhere
“What’s holding us back!?” is their merry squeal
Frozen-breath frosty in the springtime air

Two little children both ready for a ride
Realize they are held back by a third
But only for a moment (at least he tried!)
Three little children, each a happy snowbird

And off they go, following their own chosen track -
Dear little children, nothing will ever hold you back!


AnthonyGermain (@AnthonyGermain) / Twitter

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

         An Instruction in the Virtue of Patience for New Teachers

This truth in teaching children must be told:
A high school boy’s eyes are perpetually rolled

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

     An LGBTRDCST Deconstruction of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy

Blue Boy must be examined through the lens
Of neo-post-colonial queer theory
And LGBT hegemonism
Inverted as bourgeois sentimentalism

It subverts the trope of trans-feminism
As a patriarchal gesture of scorn
Plasticized in pale iridescent blue
And transgressive in its imposture

Or maybe it’s some kid bribed with a shilling
To pose for this picture, however unwilling

Anna Apples

Apples, which last week made the orchard trees
A festival of red among the green,
Are disappearing now, and hard to find
And hard to reach, high up and hidden away

Their joyful season is fading in early June
Their mothering trees are in mourning now
For the late-winter blooms that grew so soon
And ripened into transient perfection

Like happy children playing hide-and-seek
They slip away into the leaves and years

Annoyme.com

                     An Advertising Monologue in Upspeak

So I just went on annoyme.com
And like I found my ring you know like on
Annoyme.com where you will find
Those unique designs that you just can’t find

And those really famous great big name brands  
AND YOU KNOW WHICH ONES I’M TALKING ABOUT
Annoyme.com has the selections and styles
You want to see at annoyme.com

I’m going back on annoyme.com
Today, right now, while I should be at work



(Repeat many times each day for weeks and weeks until the listener changes radio stations.)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              An Old Crucifix on the Garden Gate

Summer is better in theory than in practice
A vision through the window of a shady lawn
All green beneath perfect Robin Hood oaks
Bright leaves, a chair, a book, a glass of tea

But the thermometer stands at 97
Even the shade itself wants to burn one’s skin
Wasps seem to seek their end in suicide dives
Wanting to die beneath the swing of a hat

Summer is better as abstract theories
And in our happy childhood memories

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              An Old Man Clinging to a Microphone

                          Those he commands move only in command,
                          Nothing in love…

                                             -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

An old man bowed his head, maybe in prayer
Asking forgiveness for the massacre of innocents
Or maybe he was sorry only for himself
Because no one liked him anymore

His speech was as fragmented as the dead
He gobbled out words, poor scripted cliches’
Those in attendance felt little for him -
Pity, yes, and surely something of fear

For no one dared ask him, as he shuffled away,
“Mr. President, will you please resign today?”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

         An Old Man in the Hardware Store Considers Autumn

                   “And He has poured down for you the rain”

                                                       -Joel 2:23

“When I’m through here,” he laughed, “I’m going home
I’m going to sit and listen to the rain
My hayfield’s all burnt up, my yard is dead
So I’m gonna to let the rain sing me to sleep”

We said our good-byes to the driest summer ever
And a thank you, Jesus for sweet rain at last
Next to the paper sacks of deer-bait corn
And a display of made-in-China tools

The wind blew open the heavy double doors
And the rain blew with it, and we were glad

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

             An Old Man on a Balcony, Gasping for Breath

              Those he commands move only in command,
               Nothing in love

                                      -Macbeth V.ii.19-20

The city and the nation seem to ignore him
He stands irresolutely, heaving his shoulders
Twitching his lips, fidgeting with his coat
Behind his embalmers’ makeup seeking breath

There are no happy cheering crowds tonight
He waves only to a departing helicopter
And salutes the ghosts of what might have been
Before turning away, inside, to the silence

The people talk about him, but not to him
If they did, he would not listen - he is alone

Okay, I’m scared. Seventy-one years old
And scared. What if the teachers don’t like me?
What if those old principals don’t like me?
And what if the children don’t like me, huh?

I’m apprehensive about my first day
The librarian likes me, though. She’s nice
She asked me to be there. I’ll shine my shoes
And wear a clean shirt and tie – still, I’m scared

Oh, yes, there’s tension in the atmosphere
For this library reading volunteer!

An Old Man Running While Carrying a Volume of The World Book Encyclopedia

A Scene from a Hospital Waiting Room

Cups of coffee are reverently borne
Along the bright hospital corridors
By nurses, doctors, technicians, and all
Scrub-suited healers on their dutiful rounds

But wait! A lean, energetic old man
His wild white hair brimming his gimme cap
Dodges among the sacred cups, and runs
Up the stairs to the ICU waiting room

Clutching an old encyclopedia
Like a dispatch from the front –
                                                               I wish I’d asked

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             “A Non-Credible Bomb Threat”

How can a bomb threat not be credible?
Either there is a bomb threat
Or there is not a bomb threat
If the immediate determination
(And on what basis is this determination made?)
(And by whom?)
Is that a bomb threat is not credible
Then why is there an investigation?
A non-credible bomb threat by definition is an incredible bomb threat
That’s incredible
And since there is a bomb threat at a school
Then why are the children kept inside the school
(Shelter-in-place with a reported bomb or not-credible bomb?)
And thus blocked from escaping?

A bomb speaks more clearly than the school administration

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­     A Non-Religious Jew

                  “Well, he may be a good man but he’s certainly not
                    Christian. Zelensky is the first Jewish president of
                    Ukraine, even if he is non-religious...”

                                    -The Remnant, 2 March 2022

He stands in rubbled streets during bomb attacks
And takes a selfie to show us he’s alive
Our tee-shirted leader of the free world
He stands among the wreckage and reassures us

He stands in rubbled streets; he needs a shave
He needs some sleep; he does not need a ride
But The Remnant - O infallible Remnant! –
Dismisses him as just a Jew

If only we were all that Jewish
If only we were all that non-religious

An Open Letter to…

A response to the recent fashion, victim-y and self-obsessed, of open letters

Dear Mean People,

You don’t know me but I know you hate me
Because you are not me so I hate you
Even though I don’t know you, but you hate me
For not being as kind and loving as me

So I forgive you, you Facs…Fascs…Fascists
For not thinking and feeling just like me
You just don’t understand my special needs
How my soul is a flower that always bleeds

Because your jack-boots stomped all over my heart
And I’ve got a degree; I’m really smart

An Open Letter to Really Important People
                     The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement
           A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret ****** Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)

So, like, like, so, like, so, you know, like, so,
Like, so, like, you know, it was like, you know,
Like, so, like, you know, like, so, like, like, so,
Like, so, you know, like, so, like, so, like, like,

You know, it was like, you know, like, so, like,
So, you know, like, so, like, like, so, like, so,
You know, like, so, like, so, like, like, you know,
It was like, you know, like, so, like, you know,

Like, so, like, like, so, like, so, you know,
So, like, so, like, like, you know, actually…

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                        An Orderly Transition of Power, They Say

             Is’t night’s predominance, or the day’s shame
             That darkness does the face of earth entomb
             When living light should kiss it?

                              -Macbeth II.iiii.9-11

On Inauguration Day there should be:

Children waving sparklers, avenues of light
High school bands and Boy Scouts in formation
Merriment along streets scrubbed clean and bright
A happy people in love with their nation

But we are given:

Soldiers, concertina wire strung between Corinthian columns, secret service, chain-link fencing, police, checkpoints, soldiers, roadblocks, secret service, rooftop marksmen, police, missile batteries, soldiers, no-go zones, secret service, lockdowns, police, lockouts, soldiers, security gates, secret service, identification checks, police, radar, soldiers, radios, secret service, body scans, police, x-rays, soldiers, sniffer dogs, secret service, permits, police, passes, soldiers, patdowns, secret service, badges, police, questions, soldiers

Fear

Why?

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      A Note about Greeting Even the Most Beneficent Reptiles

I speak to them softly
But the tree frogs look at me
Disapprovingly

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Another Antihistamine Dream

A failing body staked out upon a bed
Hospital bed
Drips drip and sour drains drain in darkness and silence
The room is all darkness and silence, silence
Is it I?

No one comes

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  Ano­ther Day of Rioting

There they go again, screaming at each other
In a land of plenty, but all wanting more
Through posturing, threatening, bullying
And blaming each other for the wreckage

There they go again, screaming at each other
Bluejays and cardinals are the noisiest of all
And squirrels muscling in on the action
Crows criticizng from branches up high

There they go again, screaming each other
Around their seed-feeder beneath their oak

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Another Funeral in Margaritaville


                                      Introibo ad altare Dei.

                    Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.

                                         -Missale Romanum


Of course all our friends are dying away
Old age sneaks up on us, ghosting us in turn:
Yevgeny, Jimmy, Dusty, Judith, Rod, and we
Who blessed each other in our happy youth

But I tell you we have a duty to sing our songs
Our perhaps artless lines lost long ago
Except that they’re not: we gave them to God
And He joined them to Creation for all of us

Of course all our friends are dying away
Except that they’re not
                                        See you in Margaritaville

She took an oath to defend the Constitution
But no one seemed to have taken an oath
                                                                ­             to defend her


(Now back to the Gridiron Dinner)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                        Another Student.  Another Funeral

Another former student. Another funeral.
A folder with a photograph and a prayer
No one gave the cause of death - I only know
We’re not supposed to be burying our children

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                 On a Morning of Sunlit Frost


                       The greatest adventure is what lies ahead

          -Laws / Bass / Yarborough for the 1977 film of The Hobbit


I dream of a morning of sunlit frost
An early October morning, the sun just up
At the end of the lane I make a left
Then left again on the high road north

I won’t look back at either turning
I won’t look back

A Novitiate in the World

     “…you will go forth from these walls,
     but will live like a monk in the world.”

     -Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their  beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                       Anticipating a Root Canal Tomorrow

Sometimes you don’t need anesthetics to be goofy -
Anticipating a trip to the dentist will do
To confuse today’s plans into nothingness
And scatter all focus from a favorite book

People have such dentistry every day
You tell yourself, only your self is not listening
Should I go to bed early, or get up late
What will it be like in The Chair tomorrow?

A sigh, a whisper, a desperate wheeze –
Just a little more nitrous oxide, please!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    Anticipating Eye Surgery

I hope when this is done, when this is through
I’ll see the moon as one, and not as two!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   Anticipating the Fourth of July

Our Republic has become a chaos of crime:
Riots and arson, shootings in the streets
Infotainhate programmed in angry loops
Mass murders of children by men in white coats

Honoring our freedoms by silencing each other
Pulling down statues and purging our thoughts
Through strident influencers behind their screens
Censoring books and art and even love

With drugs and guns and all such progressive things
(But at least we’re free of those bad ol’ kings)

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                     ­   Antihistamine Dreams

My night-time sneezing, cold, and ‘flu medicine -
It flew me back to Viet-Nam last night
Not on a battlefield or Ye Olde Veterans’ tour
But with a mixed group younger than any war

From a tour bus I pointed out scenes of my youth
To people who wisely were not interested
Who with their Leicas took pictures of fields
And the languid flow of the Vam Co Tay

And there were no hard feelings anywhere
Until someone shot me from a window

This site does not permit the caesura divisions at all and I will not post the poem without them. You can find "Antihistamine Dreams with a Little Touch of Grendel in the Night" at my own not-very-well constructed site,

https://reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com/2019/01/antihistamine-dreams-with-little-touch.html

where the divisions are merely botched, not forbidden.

(I think it's rather nice, shivery little poem, especially if read around a campfire at night)




“A little touch of Grendel in the night” is a takeoff of “a little touch of Harry in the night” in Henry V.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                          Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container

                         “Anti-Tarnish Silverware Container”

                                  -a sticker inside the box

A cheap wooden box nailed together long ago
All scratched and patched with mismatched nails and screws
And lined inside with stained, decaying felt
With slots for long lost knives and forks and spoons

Part of someone’s treasure in the Depression time
A dollar or two a month on a layaway plan
At Montgomery Ward or Penney’s or Sears
The “good” silver for Thanksgiving and Christmas

The silverplate has been garage-saled and lost
But there was love, and somehow love remains

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil

Plough Monday was by-passed some weeks ago
The Virus of Many Names kept me abed
And then the snow and ice kept me inside
And then – indolence, indolence, okay?

But today, oh, today!

The morning was fresh and cool and damp and still
I wheeled the tiller into the garden patch
Fresh gasoline, then primed the little bulb
And turned the red plastic lever just so

And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And said bad words
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And pulled the cord
And snarled bad words
And pulled the cord –

Pow!

For smoke and fire
And noise – hooray!
Then forward the tines

The tines at first bounced off the new green grass
I pulled the smoke and noise machine back, back
And held the smoke and noise machine in place
And wrestled it, pinning it to the earth until

It bit into the grass, the bright spring grass
And hurled it back, and then some earth, and more
And still more earth, sweet earth, the nourishing earth
Flung up and out and back again, and down

And there the earth must rest for a few weeks
Then to be turned again, sweet and warm
To receive the ready seeds of happy new life
And join in the miracle of Creation

And in the summer when the soft breezes blow
Zinnias and sunflowers and wild marigolds
Will lift their heads and sing hymns to the sun
And bees and hummingbirds hum the “Amen”

And in those days I will speak kind words
To them all, and study rotor-tillers no more